


Come to Me Now

by Sottovoce_Duvine



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24762565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sottovoce_Duvine/pseuds/Sottovoce_Duvine
Summary: Alice wouldn’t be caught dead sitting in the Whyte Wyrm.
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Come to Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my drafts for so long, kind of finished but definitely not publishable. I wrote it just as an exercise. It's sort of au-ish but not really. You'll see what I mean.
> 
> Title from Kevin Morby's song "Come to Me Now" 
> 
> Thanks for tuning in ^_^

Alice wouldn’t be caught dead sitting in the Whyte Wyrm. 

Maybe twenty five years ago--maybe even twenty years ago--but not now. It would have taken a shitstorm to convince her to leave the safety net of the North Side and slither her way back to the snake pit. Which is exactly how she ended up in the same bar she frequented as a wild and sullen teenager, nursing a Miller and screening her husband’s calls. There  _ was _ a shitstorm happening around her, but why now? Why this tragedy on top of everything she’s endured this year? Why did it have to be this particular Saturday night and this particular booth? If you had told the mother of two a year ago--hell, a month ago--that she was going to be milling about in her old stomping grounds, Alice Smith might’ve slapped you in the face like she did Penelope Blossom in the girl’s bathroom her junior year. But Alice Cooper...Alice Cooper didn’t know up from down, left from right. She didn’t know what to trust or how to feel with nothing inside her to feel with. All her emotions, the shame and disappointment, the secret relief she felt after it was all done, had run down her shower drain along with all that blood. By anyone’s standards, Alice was empty inside. Completely and irrevocably bare. As hollow as the first beer she’d finished an hour ago. 

It was yet another hour that had gone by. She had just walked back from using the women’s (surprisingly) clean bathroom when she spotted him. Of course. It had to be him. Out of all the serpents in Riverdale, he had to be the one to ruin her already shitty night. Just the mere sight of him caused her blood to boil and her skin to crawl. Even if she hadn’t seen him, even if he somehow managed to disappear in the heavy crowded bar and she never saw him again for the rest of the night, it still wouldn’t lessen her resolve. All it took was the knowledge that he was in the same vicinity as her, breathing the same air as she, licking the same beer from off his lips, to set her off completely. 

He was over by the packed bar, yelling something, presumably his order, over to Hog Eye as the bartender nodded. FP lit a cigarette as his traditional shot of whiskey was set down in front of him. Alice’s eyes raised as Hog Eye finished pouring another dark beverage in a chilled glass for FP. It resembled a pint of Stout, like his old man used to drink. 

Huh. She guessed a few things had changed.

Alice watched as FP tossed back the shot. He cringed as the smokey rye burned his throat but drowned the bitter flavor with a sip of his beer. He casually looked around the room. She watched him intently, her heart picking up speed at the prospect of him finding her out in the crowd. But he didn’t, at least, not yet. FP simply watched over the patrons, some with mild disdain, others with a touch of fondness, but most with an uncanny indifference. Alice supposed he had the right to. Last she heard, he was the King of them all, leading with a firm hand, and keeping tensions between the North and the South side at bay. He probably knew a great deal about most of his people, and would undoubtedly take a bullet for all of them, but that didn’t mean he had to like them. 

Her phone buzzed on the table aggressively. Alice looked down and almost rolled her eyes. It was Hal. Again. She pressed the red icon at the bottom of the screen and went straight to her settings menu. Betty had shown her once how to turn the vibration off for messages but now Alice wanted the annoying phone tremor to leave her calls alone too. She cursed at all the confusing symbols until she finally figured out how to turn the calibration off. 

“That phone kill your dog or somethin’?” 

His voice was a mixture of petty and more petty...maybe there was some amusement and surprise mixed in there as well but she was too irritated to give him the credit. Alice shoved her phone aside and looked up at FP. “I don't have a dog, Forsythe.” 

“No? Oh right, that’s just your husband. How is Hal?”

Alice glared at him as he slid into the opposite end of the booth, setting his glass of beer down next to her nearly empty bottle. Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands, leaving moon shaped crescents in the pink skin. 

“What do you want, FP?” 

He took a drag from his cig and stared at her. It felt more like he was scrutinizing her more than anything else. 

“What are you doing here, Alice?” He countered her question with one of his own.

For her part, she shrugged, tracing the wood designs on the sticky table with a perfectly painted fingernail. “Last time I checked, this was a bar.” 

“A bar that you shit talk in your paper every week.” He retorted. 

“I only talked shit about the area it was in.” She defended, even though she didn’t much care what her past transgressions were when it came to the South Side or the Serpent gang.

“I thought you quit swearin’?” He tilted his head, grabbing for his drink. Her eyes briefly strayed to the watch around his left wrist, the one she got him for his sixteenth birthday. Alice looked away. She hadn’t necessarily stopped cursing altogether, she just didn’t do it around other people, or her children for that matter. But she couldn’t help the occasional fuck or shit that came out of her mouth when she hit her foot on the edge of the living room table or cut her finger accidently while cooking dinner. 

“I thought you quit smoking?” Alice parried. 

“I did. A couple of years ago.” 

She rolled her eyes at the dark-haired serpent. “What happened?” She felt inclined to ask. 

He stared at her for a full minute before saying, “One never gets over a first love.” He punctuated the statement with a piercing look, and then a shrug, and Alice had to practically tear her fingers away from her palms just in case she drew blood. There was so much double meaning behind FP’s words and she had no doubt that they were intentional.

“Might want to double your efforts, then. Smoking kills. And it’s a disgusting habit.” 

FP laughed and set his beer back down, leaning his leather arms over the table. “Don’t kid yourself, Alice. How many years has it been? Twenty-five? That’s a long time, I’ll give you that. What did you do? Quit cold turkey? I’m sure Hal had a pretty heavy hand in that.” 

“So what if he did? Sure beats a life of lung cancer and dying when I’m only fifty-seven.” 

FP chuckled at her, taking another aggravating puff of rolled up cancer. Alice chose to ignore him and look out the window. There was a wave of cars, but mostly bikes parked in their designated spots. If she squinted hard enough, she could just make out his all black motorcycle on the other side of the parking lot. 

A memory flashed before her eyes. A much younger FP parked outside her trailer, beckoning her over with one crooked finger that his father had broken months before.

“C’mere.” He had ordered. Alice feigned indifference, then, but did as she was told. She walked over to the varsity jacket, pretty and slow, pretty and thin. She swung a long leg over the back of FP’s bike and wrapped her arms around his slender waist as he kicked the stand back and floored the throttle as hard as he could. Forsythe didn’t know how to go slow. He liked fast cars, quick hookups, quicker highs, and faster motorcycles. Alice had clutched him so tightly that she was sure she had left bruises on his skin, even with the added layer of his jacket. She hated when he wore it. And as much as it pained her to think it back then, she’d much rather take a FP in a serpent jacket than a varsity one.

….That night had been the night they made Charles. 

FP drove them over to the drive-in theater. To her surprise, he paid for two tickets to some horror movie called the  _ Candyman  _ and even bought her a stick of blue cotton candy at the concession stand. They laid in the back of his father’s truck bed and Alice snuggled herself underneath the old and dingy blankets that strangely smelled of oil and the spice of his cologne. She anticipated snuggling with him during the duration of the movie, but Forsythe kept a respectable distance. Alice had rolled her eyes at a particularly stupid scene and finally snapped. She climbed into FP’s lap and grabbed a fistful of his thick, black, hair. His head went back willingly, and he smirked up at her smugly. He had clearly wanted her to make the first move. Bastard. 

A bastard with talented hands and a giving tongue, nonetheless. She had basked in the weight and warmth of him on top of her as FP kissed her body, softly, gently, slowly, and took her virginity, unbeknownst to him. And as he bit at her neck like a starving snake, she looked up at the sky and clutched his head to her quivering body, smiling at the pitch black sky, thinking of forever. The sound of terrified screams in the background only highetening the experience. 

Alice was thorted from her daydreams as the rustle of fabric alerted her to his presence again. FP removed his jacket and dropped it next to him in the booth. Alice’s eyes immediately went to the newly exposed skin. As he tapped the ashes from his nearly finished cigarette into the complimentary ashtray off to the side, she watched as his arms flexed and the muscles moved underneath taut skin. They were no longer the thin yet toned limbs that he used to beat the shit out of Jerry McCoy with for touching Alice inappropriately on the ass at Pop’s. He had filled out over the years, and not that she was intimidated by how much of the little boy she used to lay on everyday became a man she didn’t go within twenty feet of...more like...impressed. Concupiscent. 

Alice shook her head of those thoughts and met FP’s eyes across the table. It seemed like shedding his skin allowed him to lean back more comfortably in the booth. But that couldn’t be right because Forsythe had always worn the leather like a second skin. Taking it off just seemed wrong, wholly out of character. And yet, he was staring at her, looking more relaxed by the minute. 

“Don’t you have illegal things to be doing?” She griped. 

“Not at the moment, no.” He cocked his head and looked at her some more. Alice tried to look as bothered as she could. But the truth was, she knew that he knew that there was something most definitely wrong with her. He wouldn’t have stayed there so long with her if he didn’t. And she’d be lying to herself if she said it didn’t secretly, somewhere deep inside, make her happy. She liked his annoying company. She liked that he didn’t pry. He’d only sit with her all night if that’s what she wanted--what she needed. 

He wasn’t like Mary Andrews. This wasn’t like junior year. She wasn’t sitting inside Pop’s by herself, agonizing over a positive pregnancy test. She wasn’t on the verge of tears, because Alice Smith didn’t  _ cry _ , when Mary entered the diner to pick up some food for her and Fred’s date down by Sweetwater River, and saw the famous Alice Smith sulking more than usual in a booth by herself. 

Alice didn’t have friends. Not in a world so big as this one. So when Mary sat down across from her and took her hand, the pregnant sixteen year old had no choice but to spill her guts to the redhead. Mary and Hermione were the only two girls at that cesspool they called Riverdale High who Alice would even contemplate looking twice to.

But revealing that she was knocked up by none other than Forsythe Pendleton Jones Jr., was like taking a knife and vowing to cut every slither of skin that she had on her body. It was gruesome, painful, ugly, and most of all, messy. Considering he had been giving her the cold shoulder ever since he started screwing some bleach blonde vixen on the cheerleading squad. The problem was that she couldn’t even be mad at him. They weren’t exclusive and were so hot and cold every other week that he was free to whore around with whoever he wanted. Just not while she was pregnant. Jesus fuck she was _ pregnant _ . 

Mary had gotten her through a tough and potentially humiliating spell if anyone were to see her there at Pop’s, vulnerable and out of her element. Not only would her reputation have been ruined, but her pride destroyed. So she allowed Fred Andrew’s future wife to help her wipe her tears and convince her to drive over to Sunnyside Trailer Park and tell her baby daddy the truth. It was a good idea, one she had been struggling with for weeks. Alice constantly went back and forth with herself over involving FP or not that it got so bad, that even seeing him in school made her nauseous to the point that she threw up regularly during fifth period. It’s not like she wanted to keep it. She had started a fling with Hal Cooper at the time just to spite FP, but then things started to look a little differently when she saw them in a new light, or better yet, underneath the North Side streetlights. 

Walking through the South Side coming from the diner, there weren’t any street lamps around, not until you made it to the trailer park, which she did. FP lived four trailers down and as Alice prepared herself for the conversation that would change the rest of her life, she came across a scene that he had always managed to keep her ignorant to. She knew his father was a drunk. She knew he had a nasty left hook. And she knew FP didn’t fall off his bike sophomore year when he came to school with a black eye and eleven stitches that ran across his cheekbone. 

The sound of Senior Jones yelling was unmistakable. He could have woken up the entire park with that deep voice of his. FP’s screen door was thrusted open as he came stalking out, forehead creased, face scrunched up in fury. He was holding his left arm weirdly close to his chest, and Alice felt her own tightening. FP didn’t cry. Tough as nails that one. But even she could see the red in his eyes where white should be. Alice was standing by his bike and as he walked past her, she held her hand out, trying to stop him for just a second. 

“FP.” She said quietly, but he shrugged her off roughly. 

She watched him get on his bike and speed off with one hand. She stood there, where the dust and dirt that his wheels kicked up circled around her, and where the stars in the sky, the same ones that promised her forever, now promised her a life of grief and guilt. 

The next day, FP came to class with a cast on. He slid into the seat next to Hermione Lodge and didn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the week, not even her. She knew that he didn’t have any family, no kin, not really. And he had never expressed any contempt for the way his situation was. He just bit his tongue and endured it. She knew it by that Friday. Alice had finally made her decision. Never, ever, would she tell FP Jones about their child. 

Ever.

But she could tell him about the miscarriage for some inexplicable reason. 

FP was still quiet in the booth, drinking his stout. She’d thought he would have finished it by now. Alice looked to her own nearly empty bottle and decided to down it right there. When she was done, FP gave her a mild look but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until her phone lit up, and she dodged another one of Hal’s calls, the only thing that would push him over the edge, that he asked her in the most non-invasive way he knew how. 

“What are you thinkin’ Alice?” 

She pursed her lips. “You still have a scar.” She deflected, pointing to her own cheek, mirroring his left side. “It’s faint. I mean you can barely see it. They did a good job with the stitches. But it’s there.” 

His face twitched, right in the area that she was referring to, and she found the action to be reminiscent of a younger FP. 

“Did something happen with you and Hal?” He asked instead of feeding her her bone. 

“And why would you even think it had something to do with Hal?” She retorted. 

“I heard a little snake hiss through the grapevine.” He replied sarcastically. 

“You always talk in snake metaphors?” 

“Only when it takes the sting out of the bite. I could just flat out say what we both know and you feel ashamed of telling me.” 

He really didn’t know a damn thing. “It’s none of your business, Forsythe.” 

He stuck a long finger down into his glass to stir the dark liquid slowly. “Jughead told me things haven’t been the same when he goes over there.” 

“Jughead has his tongue down my daughter’s throat half the time he’s at my house. I don’t think he can get an accurate read that way, do you?” She asked him, haughtily.

FP shook his head, grinning. “Just admit it’s Hal and I’ll leave you alone.” 

“It’s not just Hal. It’s not that simple.” She revealed, tired of everyone’s assumptions. 

FP removed his hand from the glass and sucked his soaked finger in one quick motion. “You wanna talk about it?”

She left him in silence. 

FP sighed, “How’s Betty holding up, at least?” 

“Are you asking because you actually care or because you find it fitting to be a concerned parent, all of a sudden?” 

He paused, looking up at her with an ounce of disbelief that got overshadowed by his stoicism. He always did have a knack for being emotionally constipated when the mood fit him. “It’s been a long time since you’ve accused me of being the scum of the earth that I almost forgot I needed your permission to parent my son.”

“You’re not asking about your son, you’re asking about my daughter.” 

“Which might damn well be the same thing. She’s your daughter, Alice. And you’re still a serpent whether you like it or not. We take care of our own. She doesn’t need a damn jacket for me to care about her.”

Alice felt like a little girl being chided by her own father. He was right. And she hated to admit that she always treated FP as if he was her own punching bag, then and now, and never once did he complain or outwardly call her out on it. 

“Betty is fine.” She conceded. “She doesn’t really know what the problem is and Jughead distracts her from wanting to ask any questions to find out.” 

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” He said quietly, and she wasn’t sure which part he was referring to.

“Maybe.” She thought, not caring for either one. 

It used to really nag at her. Jughead and Betty dating, growing closer every day. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust his son, he was a great kid, and so far proved to be nothing like his father other than his occasional mannerisms and Jones charm that hooked her daughter in the first place. Her only problem with the young love, was that she saw a lot of herself and FP, in Betty and Jughead. She didn’t want them to make the same mistakes they did. 

FP exhaled a deep breath and leaned over the table. It made him less avoidable, harder to ignore, and difficult to look away from. “What are you really thinkin’ Al?”

The nickname startled her. She looked at him, but his eyes were on the piece of jewelry around her neck. It was a tiny opal necklace that he saved up money from working at the late Mr. Andrews’ construction site to get for her. It was technically colorless, but when the light hit it just right, white, yellow, red, orange, green, could all be seen to the naked eye. Her eyes flickered to the gold tone watch with the brown leather strap that she tried to match that of his father’s. She was glad that wearing their presents for each other, even after all these years, didn’t have to mean anything. A watch was a watch, and if he didn’t feel like getting a new one because the one he had worked just fine, then that was his problem. She just happened to know that her own necklace went with everything that she wore, and that was all there was to it. 

“Do we ever tell them? If their relationship...progresses...is it our job to tell them about us?” She pondered, hating herself for even revealing her deepest insecurities and worries to a man that hadn’t been responsible for them in almost three decades. 

“What? That we dated in highschool? We were young, Alice. It was a long time ago. It didn’t really mean anything. You said so yourself.” 

He didn’t take the sting out of his bite this time. 

“You gave me your mother’s ring.” He had been high out of his mind on Fizzle Rocks that night, but he gave it to her out of the blue, post coital, in her bed, of all places. She had slipped up in sleeping with him. She was still pregnant, FP still didn’t know, she was still technically going steady with Hal, and Forsythe was basically proposing marriage with his dead mother’s ring. 

“And you threw it back in my face. Along with your hairbrush.” 

She sickly remembered the very next morning when she chose Hal and a life in the North Side over him. “I was aiming for the wall but you stubbornly didn’t duck. You know I have poor aim.” 

“Seven stitches.” He reminded her. 

The conversation was beginning to grow lighter. She could feel it, see it on his body as he smiled down at himself. Her eyes moved from his mouth and slightly over his head to the makeshift dance floor that few danced on unless it was three in the morning and no one would remember if you did the following night. 

She sighed and FP shifted in the booth, like he was gearing up to leave. 

“Where are you going?” 

He had one leg out from underneath the table, pausing to answer her. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve opened up to me, Alice. You think I don’t know you’re holding me off with these questions about the kids and my parental track record? I know when you don’t want to tell me something. So I’m going to pick up your tab and then I’m calling it a night. I suggest you do the same.” He pointedly looked down at her phone that had lit up with another call. 

FP stood up and walked over to the bar. Alice shut her eyes and buried her face in her hands. She was lost. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. All she knew was that she didn’t want him to leave there feeling unsatisfied with her. How many times had they abandoned one another when all they really wanted was to be with the one person they could turn to and lean on? 

As FP came back to the table to collect his jacket, Alice grabbed his hand. The father of two looked down at their joined fingers, then to her eyes. She slowly urged him to sit back down and once he was back in her corner again, Alice sighed with relief.

She guessed she felt guilty for keeping him at arm’s length when he proved to her that he could handle being close--wanted it in fact. But her guilt didn’t make her feel bad like she expected it to. 

She remembered that same morning when she told FP that they were over, for good. How she felt bad for breaking his heart staring right at his broken nose courtesy of Mr. Jones. But she hadn’t felt guilty for doing what was best for her and the secret growing inside of her stomach. She hadn’t even told Hal, yet. 

For his credit, FP recognized her lack of guilt, or better yet, her agony over not feeling more of it when she felt so miserable everywhere else. He told her feeling guilty and feeling bad were two very different things. That you could feel bad about being guilty, and feel guilty for being bad, but that she needn’t worry about feeling either together. He told her normal people would--normal people do. She wasn’t like normal people according to him. She was a bitch. She needed to go to hell, and to not hold her breath.

She didn’t have any breath to hold on to. He took it when he left through her window and ignored her for twenty-five years, just up until a few months ago, when he got out of prison and their kids had started dating.

“Alice.” FP’s tone changed and she could see his patience waning. 

“Where do you go when you die?” She blurted out. Instantly regretting the moment she did. 

FP looked at her like she had grown two heads. “What?” 

“Forget it.” 

“Hold up, now. I’m not just gonna--did someone die, Alice?” 

Someone, something. It was here long enough to be a person. It wasn’t here long enough to leave her body the way it was supposed to. 

“I think...that it has to be pretty and slow. But all I know is a mess. It was a mess, FP. It was everywhere and it all happened so fast and I just wanna know--” She choked off, covering her face in her hands. She felt the booth shift beside her and then warm hands came to hover over her arms. She shrugged them off and gave him the most hostile look. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.” 

FP backed away slightly, and put his hands back where they belonged. Alice wiped at her tears, the trail of wetness on her cheeks feeling patchy and gross. She sniffed the snot back into her nose and smoothed her hair down with a shaky hand. 

“Alice..” 

“Just forget it. Forget I ever said anything. Forget I was ever here. Just go, FP. Okay, just...just go.” 

“Al--” 

“Please,” she begged, something that she had never done in her life, let alone in her marriage. But FP was the exception. He was always the exception. 

She couldn’t look at the serpent anymore than she could avoid another call from Hal. But she did. She flipped her phone upside down and let it go to voicemail. But the man next to her still hadn’t left her side. Alice looked over at FP to see him lighting another cigarette. He sat back and tilted his head up to the ceiling, blowing the smoke out until it touched the very top. He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Alice stared at him in disbelief. Stubborn, and tenacious, and completely undeniable. 

She reached over and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. FP’s head turned slowly to watch as she contemplated the damn thing before taking a puff herself. The smoke burned her lungs but cleared her head right away. She took several more drags before leaning over FP, depositing the cigarette back between his lips. He stared at her vehemently. 

“Who was it?” He asked. 

Alice looked him up and down. To the rise and fall of his chest, to the way he withered his bottom lip with his front teeth, to his light brown eyes tracking her every breath and expression. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. 

“What happened, Alice?” 

She closed her eyes. “I...I was pregnant.” 

FP sat up and put out his cigarette inside the ashtray. Alice opened her eyes to it having disappeared and her ex boyfriend giving her the most concerned look she’d ever been on the receiving end of. 

She continued, “Nineteen weeks. It was a boy.” 

FP was never one to utter those two words that she loved so much coming off of Hal’s lips. Instead, his hand found her’s underneath the table and his fingers squeezed tightly, until Alice no longer felt the blood circulating around her bones. She felt the tears again. She never liked crying in front of people--crying period. But her eyes gave way to a dam that she was powerless to stop. What used to work, didn’t anymore. 

Alice took several deep breaths to calm her nerves before she could even utter another word to him. “I was cooking lunch for myself and I felt--I went upstairs to the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and there was...there was so much blood. I didn’t even think to call someone...I just went to the hospital--I just--I went home--I couldn’t stay there after--too many hours--I just went home that night and I stripped my clothes and I turned on the shower and I sat in there until Hal came home and found me.” 

Another squeeze. 

“Did you know after 20 weeks it’s called a stillbirth? We could’ve gotten a birth certificate, hell, even a death certificate if I hadn’t lost it a week before.” 

“Him.” 

“What?” 

“It was a boy.” 

Alice stared at him until she saw the error of her ways. She had called the baby ‘it’ instead of ‘him’ and she supposed that was another defense mechanism to keep her walls from letting the water in. The truth was...she had not wanted the baby at all. Maybe at first, maybe in the beginning, she allowed herself a slither of hope to creep in. Hope that she got her second chance at having a little boy--keeping a little boy--her little boy. Hope that she could give Hal what he always really wanted. Her husband had put so much pressure on her about the pregnancy, because it would be their son and he would finally be the father, that Alice was almost guilt tripped into having the baby for him. But Alice saw things differently. She had given up her dreams of having a son a long time ago.

When Polly was first born, Alice was grateful that it was a girl, and that she was healthy. Then when they found out they were pregnant with Betty, Alice saw what she wanted to see. That she was destined to only have girls in life. When her and Hal couldn’t get pregnant again months after, years after, it only further affirmed her beliefs. The real problem with her expecting her third child and second son was that she felt like she was replacing Charles. And she didn’t know how to feel about replacing a boy--a man by now, surely--that she didn’t know a damn thing about. 

It was easier to replace what you lost but knew would never be found again. Having that baby with Hal would be like having something you lost but knew you didn’t look that hard enough to find in the first place before you replaced it. It weighed on her mind heavily. 

If she couldn’t have her son with FP then she didn’t want another one, not even with Hal. And yet...it was a baby, and she lost it all the same.

“Alice…” 

She was dragged from her labyrinthine of thoughts as FP let go of her hand.

“Are you okay?” He asked. 

The question would have startled her if she had anything left in her body to rattle. The tears had stopped and Alice knew that had to be the rest of it. Hal had not asked her if she was alright. He had yelled and punched a wall and left home but he had not asked after her. She didn’t ask after him either. 

“Heaven has to be up real high. So that we can’t touch it or ruin it like we do everything else.” She said, avoiding talking about her feelings directly. 

FP shifted next to her. “You don’t want to know about Heaven.” 

Maybe she didn’t. But if she did, it would be easier to close her eyes at night as she attempted sleep. 

“What can I do?” He asked and she sighed.

“Nothing, FP. It’s none of your concern.” 

“I know that. But I know about this now. You probably didn’t want me to know, but I do. And I can see that you’re not over this. So what can I do? What do you want me to do, Alice?” 

It never occurred to her that he wouldn’t know what to do with himself when it came to her. He was the King Cobra of the Serpents. He ruled the South Side. He always had somewhere to be and something to be doing. To think that he was sitting there, in that booth with her, and he didn’t know what to do, how to be of use, or where to even start, was an unsettling revelation for her. She couldn’t imagine how  _ he _ felt about it.

“Alice!” He raised his voice. 

“I don’t know!” She yelled back at him. She took a deep breath and shook her head to rid herself of the fog. FP sighed and before she knew what was happening, his hand found her thigh and he leaned in closer to her. His mouth found the side of her temple and the brush of his lips against the pulse point had her knees tensing. 

She didn’t want him to do  _ that _ . It wasn’t even a thought in her mind but now that he had brought it back, or more like brought it up again, it was the only thing that could make this terrible ordeal better. 

FP kissed her a second time, even more gently than the first, before pulling away. Alice didn’t even try to hide how affected she was when he moved to stand up. She stared after him confused, and when he cocked his head for her to follow him as he walked away, Alice grew jittery. Against her better judgement, she went after him.

FP was standing in the middle of the floor, looking at her, smirking. She gave him an annoyed look which only made him smirk wider. He put his arms out into the air and Alice understood then, as the music reached her ears. The song was just coming to its end, one of her favorites actually, when another song came on that she hadn’t heard in years. FP’s foot tapped along to the beat and Alice couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her mouth. He told her to come over with that look he did so well and she shook her head. 

Alice looked around the room to see numerous eyes looking at her, or more specifically, him with her. She didn’t want the whole South Side knowing that she had come there because she couldn’t go anywhere else. And she definitely didn’t want them staring at her as she danced with him.

“Alice.” He made sure she was looking at him before he continued, “Get over here.” 

Her legs must’ve had a vendetta against her reputation because they listened to FP right away. He reached out and took her by the waist until she was pressed chest to chest with him. Alice let out a puff of air and tried to relax her limbs. She didn’t know where to put her hands. That was a lie. She knew exactly where to put them but she knew not to, because she wasn’t seventeen again and parked down by Sweetwater River. She wasn’t holding the boy of her dreams as they rocked slowly to Berlin’s  _ Take My Breath Away.  _ She wasn’t thinking about getting out of Riverdale, tired of waiting for the sun to go down, tired of squinting at that God-awful town. She revealed as much to him. How she wanted more, better for herself. Whether that was the North Side or some other city, Alice wanted it bad. And when FP revealed that he wanted to go to college, shed his snake skin for a city one, Alice thought they might make it out of there together. 

She was mistaken. 

But now, as FP held her close, as they rocked back and forth to  _ September  _ like a bunch of idiots, she felt that longing to escape with him, that pull that she rejected for almost thirty years. And as his hands drifted lower, ‘till they rested just above her ass, and as his face split into a shit-eating grin, as he sang under his breath because he couldn’t hold a note to save his life, as he pulled her closer with each passing second until she wasn’t sure if she was breathing for herself anymore, Alice forgot why she was even sad in the first place. Why she had come to that bar and why she had stayed, because every thought she had was now filled with him and them and the music they used to make out to, make love to, fall in love with. 

She was smiling, laughing, and not even the looks they recieved could derail her one ounce of happiness in that moment. Alice wanted to pull him close too, so she did. She placed one hand in his dark locks, the other around his shoulder. She pulled at the hairs at the back of his neck and moved in time to the beat and their own rhythm. And when the song was slowly coming to an end, when the melody faded out into the next song, Alice tilted her head back and laughed. It changed to some pop song that their kids listened to but she didn’t mind and from the looks of FP, it seemed like he didn’t either. 

They allowed the music to spin them around each other. Alice lost track of how many times her lips ended up brushing against his neck, or how many times she had squished his foot under her own. Still he smirked brilliantly at her and watched the way her hair spun out and bounced with each twirl and twist of their sweaty bodies. It was fun. She was actually having fun and she didn’t mind letting loose. But when the song ended and another one, a slower one, a sadder one played, Alice minded very much.

She didn’t need to slow dance her feelings out the door, she needed to forget them all together. Alice stopped dancing and pushed FP away lightly. She looked around the bar once more. The looks they were getting, the ones that didn’t bother her before, started to make her feel like she was being suffocated. She was vaguely aware of FP calling her name but she was so focused on getting out of there that his voice barely registered in her mind. She felt like she was having an anxiety attack, something she grew out of when her address changed from South to North. 

Alice hurriedly retrieved her phone from the booth and made her way outside with the same deft speed. She looked around wildly for her car and when she spotted it finally, Alice practically ran to it before hands around her waist stopped her from getting any closer. She wanted to scream at FP to just leave her alone, let her go so that he didn’t have to see her like that, but all she could do was bury her face in his neck when he spun her around to him and held her incredibly close. He shushed her when the tears started up again. And she wondered what he was thinking. Probably how she was so sad for losing a child when he didn’t realize that she was really sad over losing  _ their  _ child. He still didn’t know, after all of these years, that she had his baby and gave it up for adoption. She was sad because she could never tell him. It had been too long for her to bring up something like that from the past and think he wouldn’t absolutely be furious with her for it. She already probably lost her marriage and her husband, she didn’t need to lose him either. It didn’t matter that before that night, she had never really had a conversation longer than two minutes that didn’t involve their kids. If she revealed to FP what she wanted, he wouldn’t even so much as look in her direction. She’d be dead to him. 

And Alice, exhausted, numb, sore,  _ scared  _ really for the first time in her life, knew that few things hurt worse than losing a baby or leaving a past. It was giving up a future that scratched and tore at young hearts. It was giving up a certain kind of love that held onto old ones. It was revealing a part of you that wasn’t meant to be seen but needed to be recognized, and that part, that part would be like death to him. It’d be the knife in his chest and the bite on his neck and the snake that swallowed him whole. 

If she told him. 

If she told FP, she’d kill him, and what’s worse, the woman that he thought he knew, the woman he still saw as an old friend, an old love, a missed opportunity but a bullet dogged nonetheless, that woman would have died right in front of him. And because it felt bad when she couldn’t hold her dead baby, but felt good to at least hold him. Because it was awful how much she needed to want Hal and wanted to need FP, because even now when she looked up at the stars through teary eyes, the same ones that promised her forever and then took it away, Alice realized that she had had enough of death and loss for a lifetime.

She didn’t want to kill another single thing, at least, not tonight. 

Just one night. No running, no crying, no lying, no yelling, no feeling nothing because she’s losing everything. 

And when FP pulled her closer in that parking lot, and whispered roughly in her ear, “Come to me now, Alice,” she knew then. She  _ felt  _ it. 

No more struggling. Not tonight. 

Not with him.


End file.
